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Officers need options other than gun

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Tuesday August 26, 2014 6:27 AM

The killing of an unarmed man in Ferguson, Mo. with multiple gunshots to the head and chest is,
regardless of the situation, just wrong and stupid on so many levels. It says a lot about our
society concerning the United States’ “overwhelming use of force” and gun mentality. Are we
equipping the police with the right tools, both mental and physical?

Why is the first response to reach for a lethal weapon? It is because we don’t give the police
the right tools. When the naturalist wants to subdue an elephant or rhino, what is his weapon of
choice — a hollow-point bullet? He uses a tranquilizer or net.

I am a confessed Trekkie, but I think we’ve been ignoring a Star Trek lesson too long. When the
show debuted in 1966, they introduced the Phaser. It was a gun that could be set to stun or
disintegrate, with power levels in between.

The show’s characters made a consistent point of using the stun setting for living organisms.
Only if the stun setting was unsuccessful did they increase the power another notch.

Certainly today’s Taser has a similar stun effect. Why can’t we develop a weapon that has four
capabilities: tranquilizer, Taser, high-impact rubber bullets and mace? If these four modes do not
get someone’s cooperation, the police could draw their gun and hopefully resist the
adrenaline-fueled impulse to kill.

Let’s give police and others better tools and remove deadly bullets as their first option.